A thought from Jeff Bennett
My thought on all these moves and there is a public "history" lesson to back it up. The removal of Bud Chase is a long time in the making, as in 2010. That is when Bud Chase was not going to be reappointed by the selectmen. It was an article in The Gardner News and is on the record by way of selectmen meeting minutes. There was another article in the news that had one selectmen talking about some deal and nothing was going to be done until that particular selectmen was back from a trip to Washington D.C.. In the end, selectmen backing Chase said they would vote to retain the town coordinator if Bud Chase was retained. If Bud went, the town coordinator was also gone. Bud Chase stayed. In 2011, the town coordinator was let go so here we are in 2017 and Bud Chase is run out of town. Nothing will convince me that this is nothing but simple payback. That is my opinion and I do not have nothing "on paper" to prove this other than history, a question from the current chairman of the board of selectmen to me on what I thought about a particular person (can you hear the echo?)This is history repeating itself. Also the financial things happening now were spoken about by the Advisory Committee last year; motor vehicle excise tax, debt exclusion, debt schedule and pay raises that were beyond what the town could afford. Those concerns fell on deaf ears, as people at town meeting voting to not go line item by line item. Now the people have to live with what they wanted. Time to suck it up buttercup. You wanted to keep local dispatch, time to pay for it. You wanted to keep local ambulance service, time to pay for it. Did not want to discuss the spending of upwards of 13 million dollars of your money, time to pay for it. If you want a real laugh, watch Templeton tv channel about highway department doing some things at what looks like Sadie's pit. There are three loaders in the video, 3 ! ! and here I thought Bud Chase told the selectmen, along with Dave Smart, that the two old loaders were worn out and no long any good. Highway needed a new loader, so the selectmen with push from Bud Chase, did not listen to the people and bought a loader out of road maintenance funds. If you are not going to listen to the people, why ask in the first place. Your road in bad shape, don't worry, Templeton highway is spending your road money on toys, that they apparently did not really need. And the merry go round goes round and round.
The above is my opinion.
posted by Jeff Bennett
